Pineapple Grove

Here is a subtle ghost tale...replete with symbolism for the reader who enjoys a good literary archeological dig! Its locus is Florida...the cities of Delray, and Palm Beach and...Pineapple Grove!

There is a place in Delray Beach, Florida called Pineapple Grove. It is situated off Atlantic Avenue, the little city’s main drag, so to speak. Of course, there is nothing “draggy” about Atlantic Avenue. In fact, if anything can be construed as draggy it would be Atlantic Avenue’s counterpart in Palm Beach, the posh, somewhat ostentatious, Worth Avenue. Come to think of it, however, sterile might better describe Worth. 2

Before I go on to Pineapple Grove, I should like you to indulge me a few more observations about “downtown” Palm Beach and its rather antiseptic streets. On the days I recall strolling through, there were few others on the streets, little traffic, and most of the shops were, oddly, closed. My chief recollection is an overabundance of Rolls Royce and Bentley automobiles in a variety of colors, to the extent that they faded into the horizon and became, not only unnoticeable but bordering on the vulgar. The ones I do remember were mocha, tan, deep chocolate, green and convertible. The local police patrol cars were inordinate in number and toward the bottom of the avenue was the only shop I ever seemed to compulsively visit. It was a citrus shop specializing in Lemons, Oranges and Limes. Occasionally a shelf sported a red pepper jelly which was, instead of the promised “hot,” sickeningly sweet. South of all this on AIA was Atlantic. And you made a right.3

The beautiful ride down on AIA was made interesting by the ocean on the left, the lovely, although well hidden mansions and estates on both the left and the right, and scent of old money and history embracing all of it. There are Palm Beach post cards you can buy at flea markets, antique shops and post card shows which picture this community, its hotels and tree lined roads as it was back in the forties, thirties, twenties and before. Much of it is still very recognizable. In a way, little has changed. One woman wrote, back in 1914, on a Saturday morning in February, “We are surely having summer weather, although a little cool here. Trusting you are well.” The card, signed N.W.D., is addressed to Mrs. R. Davis in what looks to be Assonet, Mass.4

Another, my favorite, read: “My Dear Blanche, We are having a glorious time, but I wish I were back in Havana. It is so unique there. Do not sail til the 17th in N.Y. Love to you, Mabelle." It was sent to 1752 Beacon Street, Brookline, Mass., February 14, 1920. The two cards show “Lake Front Avenue, Palm Beach, Florida,” and “The Australian Walk, Palm Beach, Florida,” respectively. The women pictured on one of the cards are wearing large floppy hats and ankle length dresses. One of the women carries a parasol. The other woman wears a jacket. A man in the picture wears a suit and a derby. I wonder what became of N.W.D. and Mabelle and if she got to Havana. 5

So, today, as you drive slowly and carefully down AIA you seem to sense the same trees in the deep green canopy, similar mild warmth, the possibility of the man in the derby, and a certain quiet that punctuated the simple conversation of the two strolling women on the Australian walk. It is all very recognizable. And then there is Atlantic Avenue. At the corner, a noisy, Italian eatery, Boston’s overcrowded restaurant and bar, and a clothing store selling unlimited numbers of T-shirts, the last two or three year’s issue of current, oversized post cards and beach accessories. 6

Atlantic Avenue is divided into sections. It’s quiet at the top, before the bridge and alongside the new, somewhat reserved Marriot. (It’s orange and looks like old Florida.) Also before the intracoastal waterway is an ice cream store where you can get a small cone of chocolate, or peanut-butter vanilla for just a little over four dollars…not including what you put in the tip cup. If you have anything left you can buy a sea shell or a souvenir next door.7

The Blue Anchor Pub rests on the corner just over the bridge. It would be a welcoming establishment for the thirsty or the hungry but for the enigmatic fact that the chef, supposedly Irish or English, still insists on infusing his Shepherd’s Pie potatoes with garlic, and in the evenings an acid rock band puts forth the loudest, most intolerable noise, making conversation, ordering, hearing and swallowing, formidable and near impossible feats of will and effort. 8

What follows is another somewhat quiet stretch of street with a gallery here and a sidewalk café there, like a piedmont stretching gradually before the vast range of mountain to come. It was livelier before development changes in the landscape, and activity seemed to gravitate farther west. 9

The old Colony Hotel pretty much marks the center of the Avenue and sits, beige and off-red, in the center of the city’s history. The hotel recalls another day and boasts a porch facing the avenue, furnished in Florida rattan and revelers who appear to be from somewhere else. Many grasp drinks and some sing.10

Past the Colony, on either side of Atlantic, are sidewalk cafes. Nearly every one of the avenue’s many restaurants has placed table and chairs on the sidewalks to accommodate diners who prefer dining with a close-up view of the street and its pedestrians, as their luncheon and dinner selections remain on display, longer than usual it seems, for the passers-by to inspect with their casual, unobtrusive, sometimes not so unobtrusive, glances. 11

And across the street, there are more galleries, gift shops, strange African and New World Order/Astrology shops and another ice-cream/sweets shop with patrons lined up outside, waiting to pay prices similar to the four dollar price farther east. 12

Then, approaching the northeast corner there is Louie Louie Two…or Too, depending how you read it. Around the corner from it is Pineapple Grove.13

I live in a high-rise about a mile down on AIA. When I first moved into the building I very nearly always bumped into a jolly fellow whenever, it appeared, I ventured into the elevator. His name was Scott, an Englishman of some means, very effusive, social and good natured and he seemed to be enjoying life, taking full advantage of the building, the area, the weather, the beach and the pool. I, somewhat more modestly, was just enjoying the elevator ride up to the eighth floor, which I didn’t mind doing alone.14

I grew up in an elevator building in Manhattan. The building had six floors. We lived on what I imagined to be a respectably high, fourth floor. On occasions I rode to the fifth floor, which I understood was even higher, and which seemed brighter, sunnier and more airy, and even on rare days up to the sixth floor, which was considerably higher, in fact, an apex…the highest! It was on one afternoon, as a child, that I could have sworn I saw a red marking, through the see-through gate on the concrete wall before a designated floor, indicating a seventh floor. This took place when the building still used a manually run service elevator complete with gates, a governor and heavy sliding doors operated by handles. For years I secreted the thought that somewhere, beyond the zenith of the sixth floor, there was a seventh. I could still imagine seeing that red number seven painted on the outside wall, but never found the floor.15

In the Florida place there was a seventh floor beyond the sunny sixth…and I lived above that one…on the eighth. Strange how some of the really insignificant measures in life sometimes take on inordinate proportions. But I enjoyed living not on a lower floor, above my old fourth, beyond the sixth, and certainly beyond the seventh floor. And my jolly neighbor Scott seemed to enjoy the eighth floor as well (although I am sure, for different reasons.) Certainly he seemed to traverse the hallways enough. I got to enjoy meeting him pretty nearly each of my trips up or down.16

On the first Christmas eve my wife and I spent in the building Scott must have sensed my wife’s feelings of misplacement. It just wasn’t a northeast Christmas. He rang our bell and invited us for Christmas dinner. We ate, we drank. The night was warm, happy, interesting and Christmassy! 17

A short time later four of us ate at Louie, Louie Two…or Too, (depending on how you take it!) It was before the city started building Pineapple Grove and we didn’t even walk in that direction but we passed it. We ambled west of Louie and where the Grove would later be, but there was less development in that direction (than there would later come to be.) Somehow the evening fizzled, and we wound up browsing in a drug store before the night was over. Scott said he hadn’t been feeling well. He was quiet.18

Scott died shortly thereafter. I hadn’t known him for that long a time but felt I had lost an old, old friend. The elevator trips were hardly the same. I actually found myself waiting for him to show up and had a shade of surprise when his shout to “hold it” didn’t obtrusively come from around the bend. I really thought it would. It didn’t.19

Some few years later the city of Delray started construction on Pineapple Grove. They erected a vaulted archway with an illuminated pineapple and the words Pineapple Grove in lights. The first few establishments began conducting business although the rest of the strip was dark, quiet, bare. The House of Siam? 20

I drove a ways down and didn’t find much. There was nothing to find. Always dark. Always untraveled. Always a little bleak.21

It was some time later that a friend in the building directed me to a mystery bookshop I had not known of. Turns out it was on Pineapple Grove; all the way in. I found it. It was the only shop open on that strip. 22

Each year, the Grove grows. The shops increase in number; the restaurants increase, bringing more and more amblers and pedestrians meandering and exploring. Still, though, it is a quiet place, not quite, I suspect, coming up to expectations.23

But whenever my wife and I finish a carafe of Chianti and a pasta dinner at Louie, Louie Two (or Too) I only want to pass under the arch and stroll down Pineapple Grove. 24

“Why, she asks? There’s really nothing down there!”25

But when I look north, down the long, long, dark street, past the House of Siam, Kyoto and Palm Beach Photo, Bond Street, NE First Street and the Paradise Salon Spa Café, I see something she doesn’t see. No one seems to see it. I have driven down this street, into what presents itself to me as a road into the night, into the dark North where the Florida visitors came from, into yesterday, and even beyond that. The road flows past the Jamaican Restaurant, the Mystery Book Store, what is slated to be the Café Verdi Amici, past The Beached Boat and the City Walk Apartments…and long, long past Louie Louie Two. It reaches back into the twenties and thirties when this place didn’t exist for me but it was still warm, still different, waiting…to be here now. I look north, into the black, and I see ladies on the Australian Walk and a man with a derby following. I see old, old friends. I see Cannery Row, “New Apartments Going Up.” I see “End NE 4th.” 26

 

Reviews

[Stonewall]

Gary, there is a great feel to this story and I think you have described the mood and pace of the location well. When you were describing the old post cards and the passage at the end that was looking back into the past I kept getting recollections of parts of Tender is the Night by Fitzgerald. This style could certainly lend itself well to a much longer piece. Well done.